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FREE RADICALS Edit
By Alice Munroe Edit
Short Stories 2004
At first, people kept phoning, to make sure that Nita was not too depressed, not too lonely, not eating too little or drinking too much. (She had been such a diligent wine drinker that many forgot that she was now forbidden to drink at all.) She held them off, without sounding nobly grief-stricken or unnaturally cheerful or absent-minded or confused. She said that she didn't need groceries; she was working through what she had on hand. She had enough of her prescription pills and enough stamps for her thank-you notes.
Her closer friends probably suspected the truth—that she was not bothering to eat much and that she threw out any sympathy note she happened to get. She had not even informed the people who lived at a distance, to elicit such notes. Not Rich's ex-wife in Arizona or his semi-estranged brother in Nova Scotia, though those two might have understood, perhaps better than the people near at hand, why she had proceeded with the non-funeral as she had done.
Rich had told her that he was going to the village, to the hardware store. It was around ten o'clock in the morning, and he had just started to paint the railing of the deck. That is, he'd been scraping it to prepare for the painting, and the old scraper had come apart in his hand.
She hadn't had time to wonder about his being late. He'd died bent over the sidewalk sign that stood in front of the hardware store offering a discount on lawnmowers. He hadn't even managed to get into the store. He'd been eighty-one years old and in fine health, aside from some deafness in his right ear. His doctor had checked him over only the week before. Nita was to learn that the recent checkup, the clean bill of health, cropped up in a surprising number of the sudden-death stories that she was now presented with. "You'd almost think that such visits ought to be avoided," she'd said.
She should have spoken like this only to her close and fellow bad-mouthing friends, Virgie and Carol, women around her own age, which was sixty-two. Her younger friends found this sort of talk unseemly and evasive. At first, they had crowded in on Nita. They had not actually spoken of the grieving process, but she had been afraid that at any moment they might start.
As soon as she got on with the arrangements, of course, all but the tried and true had fallen away. The cheapest box, into the ground immediately, no ceremony of any kind. The undertaker had suggested that this might be against the law, but she and Rich had had their facts straight. They'd got their information almost a year before, when the diagnosis of her cancer became final.
"How was I to know he'd steal my thunder?" she'd said.
People had not expected a traditional service, but they had looked forward to some kind of contemporary affair. Celebrating the life. Playing his favorite music, holding hands together, telling stories that praised Rich while touching humorously on his quirks and forgivable faults.
The sort of thing that Rich had said made him puke.
So it was dealt with privately, and soon the stir, the widespread warmth that had surrounded Nita melted away, though some people, she supposed, were likely still saying that they were concerned about her. Virgie and Carol didn't say that. They said only that she was a selfish bloody bitch if she was thinking of conking out now, any sooner than was necessary. They would come around, they said, and revive her with Grey Goose.
She assured them that she wasn't, though she could see a certain logic to the idea.
Thanks to the radiation last spring, her cancer was at present in remission—whatever that actually meant. It did not mean gone. Not for good, anyway. Her liver was the main theatre of operations and as long as she stuck to nibbles it did not complain. It would only have depressed her friends to remind them that she couldn't have wine, let alone vodka.
Rich died in June. Now here it is midsummer. She gets out of bed early and washes herself and dresses in anything that comes to hand. But she does dress and wash, and she brushes her teeth and combs her hair, which has grown back decently, gray around her face and dark at the back, the way it was before. She puts on lipstick and pencils her eyebrows, which are now very scanty, and out of her lifelong respect for a narrow waist and moderate hips she checks on the achievements she has made in that direction, though she knows that the proper word for all parts of her now might be "scrawny."
She sits in her usual ample armchair, with piles of books and unopened magazines around her. She sips cautiously from the mug of weak herbal tea that is now her substitute for coffee. At one time, she thought that she could not live without coffee, but it turned out that it was really just the large warm mug she wanted in her hands, that was the aid to thought or whatever it was she practiced through the procession of hours, or of days.
This was Rich's house. He'd bought it when he was with his first wife, Bett. It had been intended as a weekend place, closed up in the winter. Two tiny bedrooms, a lean-to kitchen, half a mile from the village. But soon Rich had begun working on it, learning carpentry, building a wing for two new bedrooms and a bathroom and another wing for his study, turning the original house into an open-plan living room, dining room, kitchen. Bett had become interested; she'd claimed in the beginning not to understand why he'd bought such a dump, but practical improvements always engaged her, and she bought matching carpenter's aprons. She'd needed something to become involved in, having finished and published the cookbook that had occupied her for several years. They'd had no children.
And at the same time that Bett had been busy telling people that she'd found her role in life as a carpenter's helper, and that it had brought her and Rich much closer, Rich had been falling in love with Nita. She'd worked in the registrar's office of the university where he taught medieval literature. The first time they'd made love was amid the shavings and sawn wood of what was to become the house's central room with its arched ceiling, on a weekend when Bett had stayed in the city. Nita had left her sunglasses behind—not on purpose, though Bett, who never forgot anything, could not believe that. The usual ruckus followed, trite and painful, and ended with Bett going off to California, then Arizona, Nita quitting her job at the suggestion of the registrar, and Rich missing out on becoming dean of arts. He took early retirement, sold the city house. Nita did not inherit the smaller carpenter's apron, but she read her books cheerfully in the midst of construction and disorder, made rudimentary dinners on a hot plate, and went for long exploratory walks, coming back with ragged bouquets of tiger lilies and wild carrot, which she stuffed into empty paint cans. Later, when she and Rich had settled down, she felt somewhat embarrassed to think how readily she had played the younger woman, the happy home-wrecker, the lissome, laughing, tripping ingénue. She was really a rather serious, physically awkward, self-conscious woman, who could recite not just the kings but the queens of England, and knew the Thirty Years' War backward, but was shy about dancing in front of people and would never learn, as Bett had, to get up on a stepladder.
The house had a row of cedars on one side and a railway embankment on the other. The railway traffic had never amounted to much, and by now there were only a couple of trains a month. Weeds were lavish between the tracks. One time, when she was on the verge of menopause, Nita had teased Rich into making love up there — not on the ties, of course, but on the narrow grass verge beside them — and they had climbed down inordinately pleased with themselves.
She thought carefully, every morning when she first took her seat, of the places where Rich was not. He was not in the smaller bathroom, where his shaving things still were, along with the prescription pills for various troublesome but not serious ailments which he'd refused to throw out. Nor was he in the bedroom, which she had just tidied and left. Not in the larger bathroom, which he had entered only to take tub baths. Or in the kitchen, which had become mostly his domain in the last year. He was of course not out on the half-scraped deck, ready to peer jokingly in the window — through which she might, in earlier days, have pretended to be alarmed at the sight of a peeping tom.
Or in the study. That was where, of all places, his absence had to be most often verified. At first, she had found it necessary to go to the door and open it and stand there, surveying the piles of paper, the moribund computer, the overflowing files, the books lying open or face down, as well as crowded on the shelves. Now she could manage just by picturing these things.
One of these days, she would have to enter the room. She thought of it as invading. She would have to invade her dead husband's mind. This was one possibility that she had never considered. Rich had seemed to her such a tower of efficiency and competence, so vigorous and firm a presence that she had always believed, quite unreasonably, that he would survive her. Then, in the last year, this had become not a foolish belief at all but in both their minds, she thought, a certainty.
She would deal with the cellar first. It really was a cellar, not a basement. Planks made walkways over the dirt floor, and the small high windows were hung with dirty cobwebs. There was nothing down there that she ever needed. Just Rich's half-filled paint tins, boards of various lengths, tools that were either usable or ready to be discarded. She had opened the door and gone down the steps just once since Rich had died, to see that no lights had been left on, and to assure herself that the fuse switches were there, with labels written beside them to tell her which controlled what. When she came up, she had bolted the door as usual, on the kitchen side. Rich used to laugh about that habit of hers, asking what she thought might get in, through the stone walls and elf-size windows, to menace them.
Nevertheless, the cellar would be easier to start on; it would be a hundred times easier than the study.
She did make up the bed and tidy her own little messes in the kitchen or the bathroom, but in general the impulse to take on any wholesale sweep of housecleaning was beyond her. She could barely throw out a twisted paper clip or a fridge magnet that had lost its attraction, let alone the dish of Irish coins that she and Rich had brought home from a trip fifteen years ago. Everything seemed to have acquired its own peculiar heft and strangeness.
Carol or Virgie phoned every day, usually toward supper-time, when they must have thought her solitude was least bearable. She told them that she was O.K.; she would come out of her lair soon. She just needed this time to think and read. And eat and sleep.
It was true, too, except for the part about reading. She sat in her chair surrounded by her books without opening one of them. She had always been such a reader — that was one reason, Rich had said, that she was the right woman for him; she could sit and read and let him alone — but now she couldn't stick to it for even half a page.
She hadn't been just a once-through reader, either. "The Brothers Karamazov," "The Mill on the Floss," "The Wings of the Dove," "The Magic Mountain," over and over. She would pick one up, planning to read that one special passage, and find herself unable to stop until the whole thing was redigested. She read modern fiction, too. Always fiction. She hated to hear the word "escape" used about fiction. She once might have argued, not just playfully, that it was real life that was the escape. But real life had become too important to argue about.
And now, most strangely, all that was gone. Not just with Rich's death but with her own immersion in illness. She had thought that the change was temporary and the magic of reading would reappear once she was off certain drugs and exhausting treatments.
But apparently not.
Sometimes she tried to explain why, to an imaginary inquisitor.
"I got too busy."
"So everybody says. Doing what?"
"Too busy paying attention."
"To what?"
"I mean thinking."
"What about?"
"Never mind."
One morning, after sitting for a while, she decided that it was a very hot day. She should get up and turn on the fans. Or she could, with more environmental responsibility, try opening the front and back doors and letting the breeze, if there was any, blow through the house.
She unlocked the front door first. And even before she had allowed half an inch of morning light to show itself she was aware of a dark stripe cutting that light off.
There was a young man standing outside the screen door, which was hooked.
"Didn't mean to startle you," he said. "I was looking for a doorbell or something. I gave a little knock on the frame here, but I guess you didn't hear me."
"Sorry," she said.
"I'm supposed to look at your fuse box. If you could tell me where it is."
She stepped aside to let him in. She took a moment to remember.
"Yes. In the cellar," she said. "I'll turn the light on. You'll see it."
He shut the door behind him and bent to take off his shoes.
"That's all right," she said. "It's not as if it's raining."
"Might as well, though. I make it a habit. Could leave you dust tracks insteada mud."
She went into the kitchen, not able to sit down again until he left the house.
She opened the cellar door for him as he came up the steps.
"O.K.?" she said. "You found it O.K.?"
She was leading him toward the front door, then realized that there were no footsteps behind her. She turned and saw him still standing in the kitchen.
"You don't happen to have anything you could fix up for me to eat, do you?"
There was a change in his voice — a crack in it, a rising pitch that made her think of a television comedian doing a rural whine. Under the kitchen skylight, she saw that he wasn't as young as she'd thought. When she'd opened the door, she had been aware only of a skinny body, the face dark against the morning glare. The body, as she saw it now, was certainly skinny but more wasted than boyish, affecting a genial slouch. His face was long and rubbery, with prominent light-blue eyes. A jokey look, but a persistence, too, as if he generally got his way.
"See, I happen to be a diabetic," he said. "I don't know if you know any diabetics, but the fact is when you get hungry you got to eat. Otherwise your system goes all weird. I shoulda ate before I came in here, but I let myself get in a hurry. You mind if I sit down?"
He was already sitting down at the kitchen table.
"You got any coffee?"
"I have tea. Herbal tea, if you'd like that."
"Sure. Sure."
She measured tea into a strainer, plugged in the kettle, and opened the refrigerator.
"I don't have much on hand," she said. "I have some eggs. Sometimes I scramble an egg and put ketchup on it. Would you like that? I have some English muffins I could toast."
"English, Irish, Yukoranian, I don't care."
She cracked a couple of eggs into the pan, broke up the yolks, and stirred them with a cooking fork, then sliced a muffin and put it into the toaster. She got a plate from the cupboard, set it down in front of him. Then a knife and fork from the cutlery drawer.
"Pretty plate," he said, holding it up as if to see his face in it. Just as she turned her attention back to the eggs she heard it smash on the floor.
"Oh, mercy me," he said in a new voice, a squeaky and definitely nasty voice. "Look what I gone and done."
"It's all right," she said, knowing now that nothing was.
"Musta slipped through my fingers."
She got down another plate, set it on the counter until she was ready to put the toasted muffin halves and the eggs smeared with ketchup on top of it.
He had stooped down, meanwhile, to gather up the pieces of broken china. He held up one piece that had broken so that it had a sharp point to it. As she set his meal down on the table, he scraped the point lightly down his bare forearm. Tiny beads of blood appeared, at first separate, then joining to form a string.
"It's O.K.," he said. "It's just a joke. I know how to do it for a joke. If I'd've wanted to be serious, we wouldn't've needed no ketchup, eh?"
There were still some pieces on the floor that he had missed. She turned away, thinking to get the broom, which was in a closet near the back door. He caught her arm in a flash.
"You sit down. You sit right here while I'm eating," he said. He lifted the bloodied arm to show it to her again. Then he made a sandwich out of the muffin and the eggs and ate it in a very few bites. He chewed with his mouth open. The kettle was boiling.
"Tea bag in the cup?" he said.
"Yes. It's loose tea, actually."
"Don't you move. I don't want you near that kettle, do I?"
He poured boiling water through the strainer into the cup.
"Looks like hay. Is that all you got?"
"I'm sorry. Yes."
"Don't go on saying you're sorry. If it's all you got, it's all you got. You never did think I come here to look at the fuse box, did you?"
"Well, yes," Nita said. "I did."
"You don't now. You scared?"
She chose to consider this not as a taunt but as a serious question.
"I don't know. I'm more startled than scared, I guess. I don't know."
"One thing. One thing you don't need to be scared of. I'm not going to rape you."
"I hardly thought so."
"You can't never be too sure." He took a sip of the tea and made a face. "Just because you're an old lady. There's all kinds out there — they'll do it to anything. Babies or dogs and cats or old ladies. Old men. They're not fussy. Well, I am. I'm not interested in getting it any way but normal and with some nice lady I like and what likes me. So rest assured."
Nita said, "Thank you for telling me."
He shrugged, but seemed pleased with himself.
"That your car out front?"
"My husband's car."
"Husband? Where's he?"
"He's dead. I don't drive. I meant to sell it, but I haven't yet."
What a fool, what a fool she was to tell him that.
"I think so. Yes."
"For a second I thought you were going to try and trick me with the husband stuff. Wouldn't've worked, though. I can smell it if a woman's on her own. I know it the minute I walk in a house. Minute she opens the door. Instinct. So it runs O.K.? You know the last time he drove it?"
"The seventeenth of June. The day he died."
"Got any gas in it?"
"I would think so."
"Nice if he filled it up right before. You got the keys?"
"Not on me. I know where they are."
"O.K." He pushed his chair back, hitting one of the pieces of china. He stood up, shook his head in some kind of surprise, sat down again.
"I'm wiped. Gotta sit a minute. I thought it'd be better when I'd ate. I was just making that up about being a diabetic."
She shifted in her chair and he jumped.
"You stay where you are. I'm not that wiped I couldn't grab you. It's just that I walked all night."
"I was only going to get the keys."
"You wait till I say. I walked the railway track. Never seen a train. I walked all the way to here and never seen a train."
"There's hardly ever a train."
"Yeah. Good. I went down in the ditch going around some of them half-assed little towns. Then it come daylight and I was still O.K., except where it crossed the road and I took a run for it. Then I looked down here and seen the house and the car, and I said to myself, 'That's it.' I coulda took my old man's car, but I got some brains left in my head."
She knew that he wanted her to ask what he had done. She was also sure that the less she knew the better it would be for her.
Then, for the first time since he had entered the house, she thought of her cancer. She thought of how it freed her, put her out of danger.
"What are you smiling about?"
"I don't know. Was I smiling?"
"I guess you like listening to stories. Want me to tell you a story?"
"I'd rather you'd leave."
"I will leave. First, I'll tell you a story."
He put his hand in a back pocket. "Here. Want to see a picture? Here."
It was a photograph of three people, taken in a living room with closed floral curtains as a backdrop. An old man — not really old, maybe in his sixties — and a woman of about the same age were sitting on a couch. A very large younger woman was sitting in a wheelchair drawn up close to one end of the couch and a little in front of it. The old man was heavy and gray-haired, with eyes narrowed and mouth slightly open, as if he were asthmatic, but he was smiling as well as he could. The old woman was much smaller, with dyed brown hair and lipstick. She was wearing what used to be called a peasant blouse, with little red bows at the wrists and neck. She smiled determinedly, even a bit frantically, her lips stretched over perhaps bad teeth.
But it was the younger woman who monopolized the picture. Distinct and monstrous in a bright muumuu, her dark hair done up in a row of little curls along her forehead, cheeks sloping into her neck. And, in spite of all that bulge of flesh, an expression of some satisfaction and cunning.
"That's my mother and that's my dad. And that's my sister, Madelaine. In the wheelchair. She was born funny. Nothing no doctor or anybody could do for her. And ate like a pig. There was bad blood between her and me since ever I remember. She was five years older than me and she just set out to torment me. Throwing anything at me she could get her hands on and knocking me down and trying to run over me with her f**kin' wheelchair. Pardon my French."
"It must have been hard for you. And for your parents."
"Huh. They just rolled over and took it. They went to this church, see, and this preacher told them she was a gift from God. They took her with them to church and she'd f**kin' howl like a f**kin' cat in the back yard and they'd say, 'Oh, she's tryin' to make music, oh, God f**kin' bless her.' Excuse me again.
"So I never bothered much with sticking around home, you know. I went and got my own life. That's all right, I says, I'm not hanging around for this crap. I got my own life. I got work. I nearly always got work. I never sat around on my ass drunk on government money. On my rear end, I mean. I never asked my old man for a penny. I'd get up and tar a roof in the ninety-degree heat, or I'd mop the floors in some stinkin' old restaurant or go grease-monkey for some rotten cheatin' garage. I'd do it. But I wasn't always up for taking their shit, so I wasn't lasting too long. That shit that people are always handing people like me, and I couldn't take it. I come from a decent home. My dad worked till he got too sick — he worked on the buses. I wasn't brought up to take shit. O.K., though — never mind that. What my parents always told me was 'The house is yours. The house is all paid up and it's in good shape and it's yours.' That's what they told me. 'We know you had a hard time here when you were young, and if you hadn't had such a hard time you coulda got an education, so we want to make it up to you how we can.' Then not long ago I'm talking to my dad on the phone and he says, 'Of course, you understand the deal.' So I'm, 'What deal?' He says, 'It's only a deal if you sign the papers that you will take care of your sister as long as she lives. It's only your home if it's her home, too,' he says.
"Jesus. I never heard that before. I never heard that was the deal before. I always thought the deal was that when they died she'd go into a home. And it was going to be my home.
"So I told my old man that wasn't the way I understood it, and he says, 'It's all sewed up for you to sign, and if you don't want to sign it you don't have to. If you do sign it, your Aunt Rennie will be around to keep an eye on you, so when we're gone you see you stick to the arrangements.' Yeah, my Aunt Rennie. She's my mom's youngest sister and she is one prize bitch. Anyway, he says, 'Your Aunt Rennie will be keeping an eye on you,' and suddenly I just switched. I said, 'Well, I guess that's the way it is and I guess it is only fair. O.K. O.K. Is it all right if I come over and eat dinner with you this Sunday?' 'Sure,' he says. 'Glad you have come to look at it the right way. You always fire off too quick,' he says. 'At your age you ought to have some sense.' 'Funny you should say that,' I says to myself.
"So over I go, and Mom has cooked chicken. Nice smell when I first go into the house. Then I get the smell of Madelaine, just her same old awful smell. I don't know what it is, but even if Mom washes her every day it's there. But I acted very nice. I said, 'This is an occasion. I should take a picture.' I told them I had this wonderful new camera that developed right away and they could see the picture. 'Right off the bat, you can see yourself — what do you think of that?' And I got them all sitting in the front room just the way I showed you. Mom, she says, 'Hurry up. I have to get back in my kitchen.' 'Do it in no time,' I says. So I take their picture and she says, 'Come on, now, let's see how we look,' and I say, 'Hang on, just be patient, it'll only take a minute.' And while they're waiting to see how they look I take out my nice little gun and bin-bang-barn I shoot the works of them.
"Then I took another picture and I went out to the kitchen and ate up some of the chicken and didn't look at them no more. I kind of had expected Aunt Rennie to be there, but Mom said she had some church thing. I would've shot her, too, just as easy.
"So lookie here. Before and after."
The man's head had fallen sideways, the woman's backward. Their expressions were blown away. The sister had fallen forward, so there was no face to be seen, just her great flowery swathed knees and dark hair with its elaborate and outdated coiffure.
"I coulda just sat there feelin' good for a week. I felt so relaxed. But I didn't stay past dark. I made sure I was all cleaned up and I finished off the chicken and I knew I better get out. I was prepared for Aunt Rennie walkin' in, but I got out of the mood I'd been in and I knew I'd have to work myself up to do her. I just didn't feel like it no more. One thing, my stomach was so full. It was a big chicken, and I ate it all instead of packin' it with me, because I was scared the dogs would smell it and cut up a fuss when I went by the back lanes like I figured to do. I thought that chicken inside of me would do me for a week. Yet look how hungry I was when I got to you."
He glanced around the kitchen. "I don't suppose you got anything to drink here, do you? That tea was awful."
"There might be some wine," she said. "I don't know — I don't drink anymore."
"You A.A.?"
"No. It just doesn't agree with me."
She got up and found that her legs were shaking. Of course.
"I fixed up the phone line before I come in here," he said. "Just thought you ought to know."
Would he get careless and more easygoing as he drank, or meaner and wilder? How could she tell? She found the wine without having to leave the kitchen. She and Rich used to drink red wine every day in reasonable quantities because it was supposed to be good for your heart. Or bad for something that was not good for your heart. In her fright and confusion, she was not able to think what that was called.
Because she was frightened. Certainly. Her cancer was not going to be any help to her at the present moment, none at all. The fact that she was going to die within a year refused to cancel out the fact that she might die now.
He said, "Hey, this is the good stuff. No screwtop. Haven't you got no corkscrew?"
She moved toward a drawer, but he jumped up and put her aside, not too roughly.
"Uh-uh, I get it. You stay away from this drawer. Oh my, lots of good stuff in here."
He put the knives on the seat of his chair, where she would never be able to grab them, and used the corkscrew. She did not fail to see what a wicked instrument it could be in his hands, but there was not the least possibility that she herself would ever be able to use it.
"I'm just getting up for glasses," she said, but he said no.
"No glass," he said. "You got any plastic?"
"Cups, then. I can see you."
She set down two cups and said, "Just a very little for me."
"And me," he said, businesslike. "I gotta drive." But he filled his cup to the brim. "I don't want no cop stickin' his head in to see how I am."
"Free radicals," she said.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It's something about red wine. It either destroys them because they're bad or builds them up because they're good — I can't remember."
She drank a sip of the wine and it didn't make her feel sick, as she had expected. He drank, still standing. She said, "Watch for those knives when you sit down."
"Don't start kidding with me."
He gathered the knives and put them back in the drawer and sat.
"You think I'm dumb? You think I'm nervous?"
She took a big chance. She said, "I just think you haven't ever done anything like this before."
"Course I haven't. You think I'm a murderer? Yeah, I killed them, but I'm not a murderer."
"There's a difference," she said.
"You bet."
"I know what it's like. I know what it's like to get rid of somebody who has injured you."
"I have done the same thing you did."
"You never." He pushed back his chair but did not stand.
"Don't believe me if you don't want to," she said. "But I did it."
"Hell, you did. How'd you do it, then?"
"What are you talkin' about? You make them drink some of that f**kin' tea or what?"
"It wasn't a them — it was a her. There's nothing wrong with the tea. It's supposed to prolong your life."
"Don't want my life prolonged if it means drinkin' junk like that. They can find out poison in a body when it's dead, anyway."
"I'm not sure that's true of vegetable poisons. Anyway, nobody would have thought to look. She was one of those girls who had rheumatic fever as a child and coasted along on it, couldn't play sports or do anything much, always having to sit down and have a rest. Her dying was not any big surprise."
"What she ever done to you?"
"She was the girl my husband was in love with. He was going to leave me and marry her. He had told me. I'd done everything for him. He and I were working on this house together. He was everything I had. We hadn't had any children, because he didn't want them. I learned carpentry and I was frightened to get up on ladders, but I did it. He was my whole life. And he was going to kick me out for this useless whiner who worked in the registrar's office. Everything we'd worked for was going to go to her. Was that fair?"
"How would a person get poison?"
"I didn't have to get it. It was right in the back garden. Here. There was a rhubarb patch from years back. There's a perfectly adequate poison in the veins of rhubarb leaves. Not the stalks — the stalks are what we eat, they're fine — but the thin little red veins in the big rhubarb leaves, they're poisonous. I knew about this, but I didn't know exactly how much it would take to be effective, so what I did was more in the nature of an experiment. Various things were lucky for me. First, my husband was away at a symposium in Minneapolis. He might have taken her along, of course, but it was summer holidays and she had to keep the office going. Another thing, though — she might not have been absolutely on her own. There might have been another person around. And she might have been suspicious of me. I had to assume that she didn't know I knew. She had come to dinner at my house; we were friendly. I had to count on my husband's being the kind of person who puts everything off, who would tell me to see how I took it but not yet tell her that he had done so. So then you say, Why get rid of her? He might still have been thinking of staying with me? No. And he would have kept her on somehow. And even if he didn't our life had been poisoned by her. She'd poisoned my life, so I had to poison hers.
"I baked two tarts. One had the poison in it and one didn't. I drove down to the university and got two cups of coffee and went to her office. There was nobody there but her. I told her I'd had to come into town, and as I was passing the campus I'd seen this nice little bakery that my husband was always talking about, so I dropped in and bought a couple of tarts and two cups of coffee. I'd been thinking of her all alone when the rest of them got to go on their holidays, and of me all alone with my husband in Minneapolis. She was sweet and grateful. She said that it was very boring for her at the office, and the cafeteria was closed, so she had to go over to the science building for coffee and they put hydrochloric acid in it. Ha-ha. So we had our little party."
"I hate rhubarb," he said. "It wouldn't have worked with me."
"It did with her. I had to take a chance that it would work fast, before she realized what was wrong and had her stomach pumped. But not so fast that she would associate it with me. I had to be out of the way and so I was. The building was deserted, and as far as I know to this day nobody saw me arrive or leave. Of course, I knew some back ways."
"You think you're smart. You got away scot-free."
"But so have you."
"What I done wasn't so underhanded as what you done."
"It was necessary to you."
"You bet it was."
"Mine was necessary to me. I kept my marriage. He came to see that she wouldn't have been good for him, anyway. She'd have got sick on him, almost certainly. She was just the type. She'd have been nothing but a burden to him. He saw that."
"You better not have put nothing in them eggs," he said. "You did, you'll be sorry."
"Of course I didn't. It's not something you'd go around doing regularly. I don't actually know anything about poison. It was just by chance that I had that one little piece of information."
He stood up so suddenly that he knocked over his chair. She noticed that there was not much wine left in the bottle.
"I need the keys to the car."
She couldn't think for a moment.
"Keys to the car. Where'd you put them?"
It could happen. As soon as she gave him the keys, it could happen. Would it help to tell him that she was dying of cancer? How stupid. It wouldn't help at all. Death in the future would not keep her from talking today.
"Nobody knows what I've told you," she said. "You are the only person I've told."
A fat lot of good that might do. The whole advantage she had presented to him had probably gone right over his head.
"Nobody knows yet," he said, and she thought, Thank God. He's on the right track. He does realize. Does he realize?
Thank God, maybe.
"The keys are in the blue teapot."
"Where? What the f**k blue teapot?"
"At the end of the counter — the lid got broken, so we used it to just throw things in—"
"Shut up. Shut up or I'll shut you up for good." He tried to stick his fist in the blue teapot, but it would not go in. "F**k, f**k, f**k!" he cried, and he turned the teapot over and banged it on the counter, so that not only did the car keys and house keys and various coins and a wad of old Canadian Tire money fall out on the floor but pieces of blue pottery hit the boards.
"With the red string on them," she said faintly.
He kicked things about for a moment before he picked up the proper keys.
"So what are you going to say about the car?" he said. "You sold it to a stranger. Right?"
The import of this did not come to her for a moment. When it did, the room quivered. Going to say, "Thank you," she said, but her mouth was so dry that she was not sure any sound came out.
It must have, though, for he said, "Don't thank me yet. I got a good memory. Good long memory. You make that stranger look nothin' like me. You don't want them goin' into graveyards diggin' up dead bodies. You just remember, a word outta you and there'll be a word outta me."
She kept looking down. Not stirring or speaking, just looking at the mess on the floor.
Gone. The door closed. Still she didn't move. She wanted to lock the door, but she couldn't move. She heard the engine start, then die. What now? He was so jumpy, he'd do everything wrong. Then again, starting, starting, turning over. The tires on the gravel. She walked trembling to the phone and found that he had told the truth: it was dead.
Beside the phone was one of their many bookcases. This one held mostly old books, books that had not been opened for years. There was "The Proud Tower." Albert Speer. Rich's books.
"A Celebration of Familiar Fruits and Vegetables." "Hearty and Elegant Dishes and Fresh Surprises," assembled, tested, and created by Bett Underhill.
Once Rich had got the kitchen finished, Nita had made the mistake for a while of trying to cook like Bett. For a rather short while, because it turned out that Rich hadn't wanted to be reminded of all that fuss, and she herself hadn't had enough patience for so much chopping and simmering. But she had learned a few things that surprised her. Such as the poisonous aspects of certain familiar and generally benign plants.
She should write to Bett.
Dear Bett, Rich is dead and I have saved my life by becoming you.
But what would Bett care that her life had been saved? There was only one person really worth telling.
Rich. Rich. Now she knew what it was to miss him. Like having the air sucked out of the sky.
She told herself that she could walk down to the village. There was a police office in the back of the Township Hall.
She should get a cell phone.
But she was so shaken, so deeply tired that she could hardly stir a foot. She had first of all to rest.
She was wakened by a knock on her still unlocked door. It was a policeman, not the one from the village but one of the provincial traffic police. He asked if she knew where her car was.
She looked at the patch of gravel where it had been parked.
"It's gone," she said. "It was over there."
"You didn't know it was stolen? When did you last look out and see it?"
"It must have been last night."
"The keys were left in it?"
"I suppose they must have been."
"I have to tell you it's been in a bad accident. A one-car accident just this side of Wallenstein. The driver rolled it down into the culvert and totalled it. And that's not all. He's wanted for a triple murder. That's the latest we heard, anyway. Murder in Mitchellston. You were lucky you didn't run into him."
"Was he hurt?"
"Killed. Instantly. Serves him right."
There followed a kindly stern lecture. Leaving keys in the car. Woman living alone. These days you never know.
Never know.


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ISSUE Project Room (Curator)
an open and versatile environment in which established and emerging artists conduct, exhibit and perform new and site-specific work
About ISSUE Project Room
ISSUE Project Room is Brooklyn's leading presenter of experimental performance and music. It provides an open and versatile environment where both established and emerging artists can exhibit and perform new works that challenge and expand conventional practices in art making.
ISSUE Project Room collaborates with curators, artists and educators to present a wide range of innovative programs including educational events, site-specific installations, performances and talks.
All performances take place at:
22 Boerum Place, Brooklyn NY 11201
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» VIEW ALLISSUE Project Room Fans
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eessex on 05/24/2012 at 01:50AM
Susan Alcorn plays Piazzolla + The Sleeping Utes and more
Susan Alcorn is a Baltimore, Maryland-based composer and musician who has received international recognition as an innovator of the pedal steel guitar, an instrument whose sound is commonly associated with country and western music. Alcorn has absorbed the technique of C&W pedal steel playing and refined it to a virtuosic level. Her original music reveals the influence of free jazz, avant-garde classical music, Indian ragas, Indigenous traditions, and other musics of the world. In anticipation of Susan Alcorn's two day residency at ISSUE Project Room we've compiled some live recordings of past ISSUE performances and a selection of tracks from her albums. The first night of Susan Alcorn's stay will include new arrangements of Astor Piazzolla songs performed with Ryan Sawyer, Steve Swell, Darius Jones, Michael Formanek, Maria Chavez followed by the world premiere The Sleeping Utes with Skulí Sverrison, Ryan Sawyer, C Spencer Yeh, Beverly Keys, Patrick Holmes. The second evening, Susan Alcorn (+)1 (-)1, will feature a solo improvised performance by Alcorn followed bythe priemer of (Minus)One, an ensemble curated by Janel Leppin, performing Alcorn's original compositions featuring Janel Leppin with Eyvind Kang, Jessika Kenney, Doug Wieselman, Anthony Pirog and Skulí Sverrisson.
Buy Tickets: Here
katiskelton on 03/15/2012 at 01:00AM
String Theories: IPR & The String Orchestra of Brooklyn
This Saturday, March 17, St. Ann's Church will host the second installation of String Theories, the joint partnership between ISSUE Project Room and the String Orchestra of Brooklyn that provides artists with an opportunity to premiere new experimental works for orchestra. This year's commission features works composed by Anthony Coleman, C. Spencer Yeh, MV Carbon, and Eric Wubbels, which is awesome, because for most of these artists this is their first opportunity to compose works on such a large scale (check out this interview with Spencer regarding the transition from solo and improvisational work to composing for an orchestra). I'm super excited to see what these guys come up with--what does Burning Star Core sound like with 10 VIOLINS? Will all the musicians be equipped with circuit-bent TV instruments? These and more mysteries will be illuminated on Saturday night.
Until then, listen to this live recording of Katherine Young's composition from last year's program, titled Inhabitation of Time. Young is a bassoonist and composer who received an emerging artist commission from ISSUE last year, and this piece sounds like what it would be like to try to walk in a straight line on the quantum level--variables constantly shifting and rearranging, time stretching and compressing. What kinds of physical laws will this year's String Theories defy? We don't yet know. Get your tickets here.

subset: commoncrawl


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Newton's Laws of Motion Lesson Plan: Impulse Game
In this Impulse game lesson plan, which is adaptable for grades 3-12, students will use BrainPOP resources (including an online game) to explore Newton's first and second laws of motion and his law of universal gravitation.
Students will:
- Explore the laws of motion and universal gravity using an online game.
- Explain and describe Newton's laws.
Preparation:This lesson plan uses a free online game called Impulse which helps students build intuitive understanding of Newton's law of universal gravitation and first and second laws of motion. To succeed in the game, students need to study the behavior of particles in order to be able to predict their motion and avoid them as they travel to the goal. During the game, players have to budget their energy use as they grapple with gravity, electric forces, and the effects of Newton's laws of motion. The game is an excellent primer for younger students just learning about forces and how things move. Older students can use the game as a model in their learning of the physics of motion.
To play, click on one side of the green particle to give it a push and navigate your way to the goal. Click next to other particles to help clear a path. But be careful—the closer you click to a particle, the faster it goes. Try to be patient and not to click too many times, or you'll run out of energy. There are 70 levels to the game, each of which takes approximately 1 minute to play. After Level 70, players can enter "infinity mode" that has an infinite number of levels.
Lesson Procedure:
- Have students explore Newton's second law of motion through the movie's Experiment or another investigation that ties into your objectives.
- Talk with students about the second law of motion that they just explored. What are Newton's other laws of motion? What else do students know about gravity and force? You may want to use a KWL chart to record and organize students' ideas.
- Play the Newton's Laws of Motion movie for the class and ask students to listen for information about the three laws of motion. You may want to turn on the closed captioning to support students' comprehension.
- Replay the movie, this time pausing it periodically so students can take notes, discuss, or suggest information to be added to your KWL chart.
- Tell students they will have the chance to see Newton's laws of motions in action and experiment with the laws themselves through an online game called Impulse. We recommend pairing students up and allowing them to figure out how the game works via trial-and-error, but you can also project the game for the class to see and model game play strategies if needed.
- Facilitate students' discussions about game play strategies, encouraging them to explain their thinking to their partners and wrk together to determine the best way to move the particles.
- Instruct students to take a break from game play after they have completed level 5, and reflect either through a partner discussion or in writing. How are Newton's laws of motion evident in the game? How can they use what they know about the laws of motion and gravity to strategize for more complex levels of game play?
- After reflecting, allow each pair of students to choose whether they'd like to continue playing with their partner or explore the game independently. Provide 10-20 more minutes of time for game play.
- Use the game quiz to assess what students learned through the game. You may want to provide time later in your unit of study for the class to revisit the game and attempt to beat higher levels using the additional knowledge they have about laws of motion.


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Posts Tagged 'BMW ecu remap'
Gama Tuning Open Day – 22nd May
Gama will be holding its next tuning day on Saturday 22nd May!
Whilst this IS open to anyone with a car that is not necessarily a Mercedes or BMW, we do ask that you check with us first to see if it can be re-mapped and we can then provide you with expected BHP and torque improvement figures.
Unfortunately we have to restrict the number of cars we do in 1 day, therefore we ask that at the point of booking, you pay a £50 deposit and the first 20 people who do so, will be the only ones who can take advantage of the special price on the day.
Only £175!
With prices normally starting from £245 upwards, we are offering an 'Open Day Only' special price of £175! All tuning booked outside of the Tuning Day, will be subject to normal pricing.
This blog will be updated as we get nearer to the date, so please keep checking back.
To book your slot in the day, please email or call:
0844 414 5704


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Mark Hamill said Friday he can't believe that he has been bestowed one of Disney's highest honors and Carrie Fisher wasn't there to see it.
Hamill and Fisher were named "Disney Legends" during a ceremony Friday at the company's biannual fan convention, the D23 Expo in Anaheim, California. He said Fisher would have making him laugh at the event and treating it with some irreverence.
The 65-year-old actor says Fisher would likely have been showing him the middle finger, just out of sight of the cameras. It was one of her favorite gestures, he said.
U.S. & World
"I really wish she were here," Hamill said. "But, she would also want us to be having a good time and not be sad."
Fisher died unexpectedly in December.
The "Star Wars" star says even on Friday morning, he hadn't wrapped his head around receiving the honor, which was also bestowed on Friday to Oprah Winfrey and Marvel Comics legend Stan Lee. "Star Wars" creator George Lucas and Johnny Depp were among the Disney Legends inductees in 2015.
Hamill, 65, reprises his role as Luke Skywalker in "Star Wars: The Last Jedi," which will be released December. Disney is expected to reveal new details about the film during a D23 panel on Saturday.
Fisher also appears in the film, and completed her work on it before her unexpected death.
Hamill said he has seen only bits of "The Last Jedi" while doing some additional voice recordings for the film, and those were in black-and-white. "It looks wonderful in black-and-white," he said.


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SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre), in partnership with Gallery 1313, is pleased to announce an open call for SAVAC's annual members' juried group exhibition. The exhibition is a platform to showcase the broad range and scope of critically engaged artwork being produced by artists from SAVAC's membership.
Deadline for proposals: 20 April 2012.
For more information, please visit here.


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Living and Working in Mt. Angel
Tucked in the rolling hills of the Willamette Valley, the quaint community of Mt. Angel is only an hour from the Oregon coast and just minutes from a multitude of amenities. In addition, Mt. Angel is known for its Swiss-German heritage and plays host to the largest Oktoberfest in the Pacific Northwest. But if adventure is what you seek, escape the inner workings of this small community and explore the Scenic Falls Tour Route, filled with views of vast farmlands and access to eight breathtaking waterfalls.
As one of the largest employers contributing to Mt. Angel's economy, Providence Benedictine Nursing Center is a leader in providing quality care for older adults. Its campus houses a primary nursing center, short-stay skilled unit, assisted living facility, child development center and home health agency. Providence Benedictine's nationally recognized programs have been serving the community of Mt. Angel since 1957.
Check out our available jobs below.
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Physical Therapist Home Health Jobs
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Caught on video: Packages stolen from Baltimore porch with child present
Child heard off camera yelling for man to hurry
BALTIMORE -- A man flanked by his child stole two deliveries left on a Baltimore woman's porch minutes after they arrived, surveillance video shows.
After spending $400 on a four-camera surveillance system for her home, Shirelle Green got her money's worth Saturday.
"I'm not sure if he was driving up the street and saw packages and figured he would jump out and steal mine with a car in the driveway on a Saturday. I was home. I was actually home," Green said.
Green said she ordered some clothes and iPad covers from Amazon.com at the end of February. By the weekend, she checked online and the website indicated the packages had been delivered on March 2. But she couldn't find them, so she went directly to the camera.
"I see the UPS man throw the package on the porch. I see the mailman throw a package on top of the UPS package, and then I see this guy snatch the package and run, and my heart freezes and I'm like, 'Really dude? You stealing my package?'" Green said.
Green said she couldn't believe what she saw, but what really tugged at her heart strings was off camera. What sounds like a child can be heard telling the man to hurry up.
"When I hear the little girl -- 'Daddy, daddy' -- I was pissed off that you would do something like that with a child in the car," Green said.
City police told WBAL-TV 11 News that they see this type of crime of opportunity all the time, and they remind residents to have packages delivered to a back yard or a workplace.
Green has been posting the video on various social media sites in an effort to help police find the man.
"He got a little girl in the car while he's out stealing people's packages. Let me call WBAL," Green said.
If you have any information regarding this case, call the Baltimore police Northern District at 410-367-3105.


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CCH Tagetik successfully delivers Arena Group's Management & Statutory Consolidation all on CCH Tagetik Cloud.
Listen to how CCH Tagetik delivers consistent, timely and accurate data for Arena Group's Consolidation process on CCH Tagetik Cloud now with more flexibility and less dependency!
With the existing solution the hardest thing really was getting consistent data in using Excel spreadsheets we had monthly data but then really being able to analyse that, at a group level, was very difficult.
It really was the consolidation package that really was the key thing giving good consolidation, good ease of how the consolidation fits together, both from a management accounting and a statutory accounting purpose.
Being able to turn products on and off rather than having to add them in being separate, that was key to us.
Obviously it was the right size product for our business.
The biggest impact has been, firstly the time, in terms, once the data comes in it's reported pretty much the day afterwards where before it would take 5 days to report.
Consistency of data, being able to match the inter-companies a week early, the whole process now is much smoother The information that is now delivered to the group team is much clearer and also the divisions are seeing the benefits of their reporting.
I think in terms of the information for the CFO and also the CEO is the data is consistent, if they've got questions that we can drill down a lot more easily at a group level and then the thing we are looking to implement now will be the dash boarding so they have more real-time information as and when the accounts come in the close process which is more visual.
I think the cloud solution was for us the better way to go, it just meant that everything was in place.
We had the right requirements, also it meant that we didn't have to worry about that, as the system developed it was upgraded and we had access to that straight away.
I think the solutions that we have from the cloud are the infrastructure for one thing and the comfort that it's always supported.
Yes, I would certainly recommend CCH Tagetik to someone else, I think if someone was considering CCH Tagetik, especially if their main thing was consolidation than, I would say, you really do need to look at the product.
That really is its strength.


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Named "SuperMUC", the new system is part of the Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) HPC infrastructure for researchers and industrial institutions throughout Europe. It will enable LRZ's scientific community to test theories, design experiments and predict outcomes as never before. The supercomputer will be jointly funded by the German federal government and the state of Bavaria.
Within the LRZ, a wide spectrum of research areas is being handled, from cosmology and the origins of the universe, through to seismology and the prediction of earthquake tremors. In order to make its performance available to a broad range of users with diverse applications, LRZ will build the general purpose system based on the IBM System x® iDataPlex® with more than 14,000 next generation Intel Xeon processors. SuperMUC will achieve peak performance of up to three petaflops. This is equivalent to the work of more than 110,000 PCs. In other words: three billion people each using a pocket calculator would have to perform one million operations per second and per person to be equivalent to SuperMUC's performance.
SuperMUC will use innovative hot water cooling to eliminate the need for conventional datacenter cooling systems. Up to 50 percent of an average air-cooled datacenter's energy consumption and carbon footprint today is not caused by computing, but by powering the necessary cooling systems to keep the server from overheating. SuperMUC combines water cooling -- which typically removes heat 4,000 times more efficiently than air – with energy efficient Intel processors and application oriented, dynamic systems management to reduce energy consumption even further.
"SuperMUC will provide previously unattainable energy efficiency along with peak performance by exploiting the massive parallelism of Intel's multicore processors and leveraging the innovative hot water cooling technology pioneered by IBM. This approach will allow the industry to develop ever more powerful supercomputers while keeping energy use in check," said Prof. Dr. Arndt Bode, Chairman of the Board of Directors of LRZ.
As HPC systems consistently raise performance, it is essential that improvements in energy efficiency keep pace. Against this background, LRZ, IBM and Intel are creating a new more sustainable approach to HPC. IBM is contributing its experience in the development and the delivery of high-end supercomputing systems. In particular, the IBM development team in Boeblingen is contributing its deep competence in the area of energy efficiency, which has been proven in comparable projects such as the IBM Aquasar supercomputer developed by the IBM labs in Boeblingen and Zurich.
Drawing on its industry-leading HPC experience, Intel is collaborating with IBM on the energy efficient design as well as providing the very powerful processors that will drive the machine. The workloads of SuperMUC will be handled by the high performance Intel processors in their entirety, without the use of special accelerators. LRZ, for its part, is bringing its long standing experience in the operations and the exploitation of high-end supercomputing systems.
The LRZ is the computer center for Munich's universities and for the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities. It takes care of the scientific data network in Munich, it offers a variety of data services, and it provides high-end computing facilities for the scientific community in Germany and beyond.
"SuperMUC is part of the tradition of supercomputers at the Bavarian Academy of the sciences, delivering excellent results for a broad spectrum of scientific applications," said Prof. Dr. Dietmar Willoweit, President of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and the Humanities. "We are very excited to be teaming with IBM, Intel and other industry leaders to continue the Academy's legacy of scientific excellence and leadership."
SuperMUC is the largest high performance computing system that IBM and Intel have collaborated on.
Dr. Rajeeb Hazra, General Manager of High Performance Computing, Intel, said: "Intel's unique partnership with IBM, together with our next generation microprocessor technology, has led to the development of the most innovative, capable and energy efficient supercomputing solution. We are thrilled to be part of this collaboration with IBM and LRZ and believe that it will set a new standard for general purpose academic and government supercomputing installations."
"With the new supercomputer, the German and European research community is getting a push to be on the forefront of international competition," said Martin Jetter, chairman of the board, IBM Germany. "Continued investment in research and development will allow us to see top research results in the future, in return. I am especially pleased by the fact that the new system is being designed and developed by experts from the IBM R&D center in Boeblingen in collaboration with their colleagues in the U.S. and Asia."
About IBM
For more information about IBM, visit www.ibm.com
About Intel
For more information on Intel (NASDAQ: INTC), visit newsroom.intel.com and blogs.intel.com.
Intel, the Intel logo and Xeon are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the United States and other countries. * Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others


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Posted on Σάββατο, 12 Οκτ 2013, 13:18 by
Read: 32.000
We talked to Andrei Mosejcuk and Kamila Kajak when we met them in Blackpool during the Dance Festival in 2013. We enjoyed the interview very much! Andrei and Kamila dance for Germany now and compete in Professional Latin. See their profile page
[Kamila] I started when I was 10 years old. My mother came across a dancing school in Warsaw and she wanted me to try. When I started dancing I felt really good. After 2 years I started to feel that dancing is taking too much of my time and I wanted to stop. I felt that I don't have enough time to do other things so I took a break. I had a break for about half year and then went back to dancing.
[Kamila] I did Ballroom dancing from the beginning. Latin and Ballroom.
[Kamila] Yes, I had partners.
[Andrei] They were not good enough for you (laughing)
[Kamila] Yes, it was a little bit like that. My first partner was my cousin but he stopped after one year. I was actually happy that he stopped because it was very hard to practise with him. I always wanted to practise hard but he was lazy. For the next two years I practised alone. I also went to the training camps alone. I had few partners later but they were lazy and it was not easy to work with them. After, I think, three partnerships I finally found a really good boy. We danced for five years or so together. When we split I had several other partners.
[Andrei] It is an interesting story. My grandmother was a teacher in Odessa in Ukraine. She took me to the dancing. My mother is a music teacher and she wanted me to play piano. My father wanted me to swim. So when I was five years old I had Monday, Wednesday and Friday dancing, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday swimming and in between of all this I played piano everyday!
[Andrei] Oh yes, no problem. It was mornings till midday (laughing). After several years of doing all this stuff I decided to stop with the piano. It is nice to hear the music but I was alone doing it and had just a wood for company! I also stopped swimming because there was too much water and too many boys (laughing). So I stayed with dancing. It was nice, many girls and I liked the atmosphere. This is why I actually stayed. I liked to talk to girls. That's why I liked to dance, because there was a good company and a nice atmosphere. Since I was a little boy I had lots of energy and dancing gave me the freedom to use it. My career started in Ukraine and I danced there till I was twelve years old. Then my parents decided to move to Germany after my dance teacher told them I will have better opportunities there. It was very hard for them to change their life but they did it for the sake of my dancing and I am very grateful to them for that. It gave me the opportunity to improve my dancing a lot.
So from the age of twelve I lived in Germany. Since then, I danced for Germany and for Belgium as I had a Belgian partner. My next partner was Polish and I moved there to dance with her. We had a good partnership and results but, as I often found with my partners, when I wanted to practise she wanted to rest. It is always difficult with dancing. This is a difficult art or sport because both partners have to have the same commitment and ideas about it. When I was 26 years old I received a gift from God (laughing). I decided to dance with Kamila. Until then these kind of decisions were made by my teachers, and this time I just thought: no, this is MY life and will decide myself. Before we started dancing together we used to practice in the same dance hall in Warsaw and I saw the same type of thinking in Kamila. I knew her for a year already and I saw her practise really hard. One day my partner was asleep in the afternoon so I went to practise alone and I saw Kamila.
[Kamila] At that time my partner was really lazy. It was often like that: he was sitting and I was dancing. So when I saw Andrei started to practise....
[Andrei] ... we were both practising alone.
[Kamila] he went to my partner to ask
[Andrei] I said to him: Lukasz, can I borrow Kamila for a moment as we are both dancing alone. And he said: no problem. And that's how first danced together.
[Kamila] We actually did not start the partnership then, it was another half year later.
[Andrei] Before the World 10 Dance Championships I broke my arm. It was winter and I fall down. I was quite upset, I went to my parents to Germany for Christmas and did not practise for a month. It was very stressful time for me. We prepared for this championships with my partner and we had a good chance to be in the top 3. But things sometimes happen for a reason
[Kamila] Maybe it was meant to be like this...
[Andrei] When I returned to Poland I met some friends and started talking about packing and coming back to Germany as I felt I really have no more reason to stay. And they told me firmly: no, you stay here and continue dancing. One of my friend invited me to the New Year party and mentioned Kamila split from her partner.
[Kamila] I actually was thinking of giving up dancing altogether
[Andrei] Few days later we met at the birthday party and I thought to myself: this is your chance, either you have courage to ask her or you always be regretting that you did not. I felt it with all my heart and my brains that this is it. So I went I ask her for a try-out.
[Kamila] During that birthday party
[Andrei] I still had a plaster on my arm and it was to be removed in a week time. But she gave me the time: try-out tomorrow! I asked for another week.
[Kamila] I did not believe it possible. At the time Andrei also danced Ballroom and he was actually better in Ballroom than Latin.
[Andrei] My Ballroom teacher Massimo Giorgiani told me that it is a shame I stopped as I have a real talent in Ballroom, when I decided to do Latin only.
[Kamila] I also liked his Ballroom more than his Latin then. I was so surprised that Andrei Mosejcuk wanted to dance with me, I thought: he is dancing Ballroom and I am not. So I thought it was not possible. I actually though it was a joke as he asked me during the party.
[Andrei] For me it did not matter if I danced Ballroom or Latin. I wanted just to dance. And dance with her. Anyway, I went back home and after a week had my plaster removed. My arm was very painful. We met and our try-out lasted for eight hours.
[Kamila] I lost my wallet just before the try-out, remember?
[Andrei] Yes, I remember. Two days after this birthday party both of us, and friends, went to restaurant. At eight o'clock in the morning of our try-out day I had a call from Kamila. When I looked at the phone and saw her number I thought there were only two reasons possible for her call: she wants to cancel the try-out or she wants to do it earlier. What should I do? If I don't pick up I will just turn at the try-put normally (laughing). But I had to be a gentleman so I picked up and she just said she lost her wallet probably at the restaurant where we were together. So I quickly dressed up, jumped into the car and drove there. Luckily they had it. I thought to myself Kamila will be pleased with me and I will now have a really good chance with her (laughing)! I felt like a Superhero (laughing)
[Kamila] I was very pleased, all my bank cards were there. I was so relieved.
[Andrei] We had a try-out for eight hours. We made four choreographies.
[Kamila] We still have the pieces of that choreography we made then now in our current routines. The Samba, Rumba and Paso Doble...
[Andrei] We have this base in our choreography we developed during that first try-out.
[Kamila] And for me it was great as well. Normally when you have a try-out with a new partner it is not that comfortable as with your former partner. Because you are used to your ex-partner and used to work with him. You know his movements. But with Andrei it was very comfortable from the beginning even more than with my ex-partner. It was a sign for me that this is a good choice.
[Andrei] For me such a partner was a gift from God. We felt very, very comfortable together. Also our minds and commitments were similar. I knew Kamila wanted to practice hard and wanted to improve. It was not all about the results. I believe that if you do a good job the results will come. So at the end of that day we decided to dance together.
[Andrei] Both!
[Kamila] Come on Andrei!
[Andrei] No, it is true. She is a pretty girl and that's why she is my wife now (laughing).
[Kamila] It was different for me, I did not like him that much. I thought he was a really good dancer and that's all.
[Andrei] OK, I know the story. I am OK with it. Now you are my wife so I won (laughing).
[Andrei] Yes, I remember the date exactly when we started dancing together. It was the 12th January 2009.
[Kamila] I already took part in the Dancing with the Stars six times or so. I remember that year I already said no to them because I wanted to do new things. I wanted to stop dancing altogether and that included quitting the Dancing with the Stars as well. I wanted to open my own dance school. I really thought I finished my competitive career. And Andrei told me he wanted to try the Dancing with the Stars.
[Andrei] I wanted that experience, to be on the stage and in front of cameras
[Kamila] And he told me he would like me to wait until the program finished so we can start practising together. For me three months to wait for him sounded too long. So I decided to go into it for the last time and called the TV people to tell them I am still available.
[Andrei] They always have been telling Kamila that she can come back anytime to the program. They really wanted her there. She was there from the first edition.
[Kamila] I won twice with my celebrity partners as well.
[Andrei] So in February 2009 we started Dance with the Stars. And we decided to move to Professionals. I felt that our dancing will be more suited in Professionals than Amateurs. I felt I had a right partner for that. It was exciting and because of that we decided not to wait for these three months and for the program to finish. We were in January, the program was to start in February and finish on the 19th of May, exactly one week before Blackpool. So we decided to start preparing for Blackpool as well as work in the Dancing with the Stars.
[Kamila] So we started practising together every day, actually during the night because during the day we had practice with the stars. I am not sure how it is in England but in Poland we were practising every day with our celebrity partners. Eight hours a day.
[Andrei] Four hours in the morning and four hours in the evening. Between that we had some lessons teaching our couples.
[Kamila] And during nights we practiced together
[Andrei] I remember we worked till 2 or 3am.
[Kamila] We wanted to dance Blackpool very much.
[Andrei] Yes, it was. We really were dancing all the time, not only with the stars partner and with each other but also teaching and you cannot sit on the chair when you do that. Couples come to you for inspiration and new ideas, you cannot let them down.
[Kamila] We did not manage to finish our Paso Doble routine. Shell I tell?
[Andrei] Why not! We made all the choreography by ourselves but we also went to Kamila's teachers: Sergey Sourkov and Mela. I knew them as well. They gave us an idea for the first part of Paso Doble so we felt we had something. So we decided to practice Samba and Rumba more. It was exciting when we went to our first Blackpool...
[Kamila] We did not finish our Paso Doble routine
[Andrei] Yes, true but I had this positive feeling about it for the week before. A week before was my birthday and I won the Dancing with the Stars on my birthday. Kamila was third. All worked for us. And now we arrived in Blackpool at the Professional Rising Stars...
[Kamila] We did not know what to expect. It was our first Blackpool together and first time in the Professionals.
[Andrei] I remember the first round. Cha Cha, Rumba... and the Paso Doble. And we looked at each other and had to laugh. We did not have a flamenco part. We would have to improvise. Kamila said to me: do your job, I trust you.
[Kamila] I said I will follow you
[Andrei] She did. And it went really good, we felt great. We went up and further through the rounds of Rising Star, semi-final felt beautiful, and then there was a recall to the finals. We stood there waiting and they called the couple from Poland: Kamila and Andrei. I felt ecstatic, I wanted to kiss everybody around! Then there was the results presentation. They called: FIRST: from Italy ... Emanuele Soldi and Elisa Nasato, SECOND: from Poland ... Przemek Lowicki and Asta Sigvaldadottir, THIRD from Poland... Wow! It had to be us!
[Kamila] (laughing) It was amazing
[Andrei] We learned later that actually we only lost by one point to Przemek. We were so happy. Few days later we went to dance the main event. We did not expect much, we just wanted to do a good job. That is what I always say to my couples: don't think of the results, do the good job and they will come.
[Kamila] If you think about the results too much it actually kills your dancing. It is a killer of your emotions
[Andrei] Funny thing is, it is actually unbelievable as well, that with our unfinished Paso Doble we ended up 7th in the main Professional Latin event in Blackpool.
[Kamila] It is our best result to date in Blackpool.
[Andrei] I was shocked! We had an amazing Blackpool that year.
[Andrei] I felt I wanted to try it once for experience but also I knew I belonged to dancing not to the Stars.
[Kamila] I think some dancers forget where they come from. They start to feel they are the Stars themselves.
[Andrei] This is the problem. They feel glamour, they enjoy the attention, the cameras...
[Kamila] Some of the dancers do more TV work
[Andrei] I spent 26 years dancing. And I believe I am quite a good dancer. To be a good actor you also need to study. You cannot do it just like that.
[Kamila] I think we are the only ones who continue competitive dancing.
[Andrei] And Marek and Kinga Fiksa. They were in the program once.
[Andrei] Yes, sure, it was a nice money. We could still do it, they keep on asking every year. But our hearts belong to competitive dancing. Dancing with the Stars is a nice job, but I prefer to teach the young, talented couples. And to dance with my partner Kamila. We belong to the dance floor not to the glamour world.
[Andrei] It inspires me. I lived in Ukraine for twelve years, in Germany for fifteen years and now I am in Poland for five years. I will probably stay in Poland for the rest of my live as here is my wife. Maybe we will move to Maldives when we earn a lot of money (laughing). But I don't think about it. I always wanted to show I can do it without any help.
[Kamila] What do you mean? Without any political help?
[Andrei] Yes. I don't care about politics in dancing. It is a difficult subject. I don't want to insult anybody. We have decided to do it our way.
[Kamila] We choose the teachers ourselves
[Andrei] We choose the teachers who will, in my opinion, help me learn dancing. I always believed that you can realise your dreams if you work hard enough. When you work hard your dreams will come true. We come to England only three times for the big competitions. We have a group of our teachers and it includes English teachers like Colin James or Lina James. But they come to Poland or we go to Denmark to see them. We have Carolyn Smith who lives in Italy. One of our teachers is Russian Victor Nikovsky and he is now affected by this unpleasant situation between WDC and WDSF.
[Kamila] Also Dima Timokhin helped us.
[Andrei] So it is only five people who we work with.
[Kamila] We don't mean that it is bad to come to England! It is just bad to get involved with the politics. Of course, there are great teachers in England but we don't want to get involved in the politics.
[Andrei] We just want to be able to realise our dreams.
[Kamila] Lots of people say we have to be here in England and take lots of lessons from the teachers here to get good results. A lot of dancers think that.
[Andrei] Everybody makes their own choices. But what keeps me dancing is my wife, the music and the dream.... I know I will never be a World Champion in Professionals.
[Andrei] I am a realist (laughing). I also believe that at some point you have to stop, there is life to be lived and not waiting for the title forever. After dancing there is life together, children, family, cars, house, and hobbies. Also meeting friends because when you are in dancing the life is so crazy there is no time for that. It is like: bed, studio, bed, studio.
[Andrei] Thank you. But this is what I was talking about. Have positive energy and work on it and you will get results. The way you treat people it will pay back. By the way, sorry that I talk so much. I like to talk!
[Kamila] I know you like to talk (laughing)
[Andrei] When we started to dance together we had a really nice time together. It started to be more than dancing. I remember once I drove 300 km to pick Kamila up from some place because I did not want her to come back by train alone. It was maybe crazy but all men when they are in love do crazy things! I wanted to move mountains for her then and this is what I am trying to do now for my wife. Perhaps a little less now (laughing)
[Kamila] Not less! (laughing). It is the same.
[Andrei] So I am as good as I was. One day I remember Kamila came to practice and she was as cold as a stone. I did not understand why, we already started going out together, had a nice time. So we started with the Rumba and I stopped the music. I turned to her and gave her the ultimatum: either you have it all or I walk out of this door and you have nothing.
[Kamila] No, it wasn't like that. You asked me: why don't you like me, what do I need to change for you to like me. There was no ultimatum
[Andrei] In my head it was. And she changed from that day. We decided to be together on the 21st of March. I have all the dates in my head (laughing). It was two months and two weeks after we first danced together. I proposed to her and told her I want to have horses, I want to have limousines and I want to have a beautiful wife. But I forgot to go on one knee! And Kamila did not take a ring.
[Kamila] You cried
[Andrei] She asked: what about the knee. Then I went on both knees and she accepted. She was mine (laughing).
[Kamila] It is hard to say. There is something which is both bad and good thing. Andrei is a perfectionist. He believes he needs to be perfect in everything he does. At home he has everything neat and in order. His cloths are perfectly aligned in the closet. Everything is organised by colour and in order. When he wakes up in the morning and sees that the glasses on the table are misaligned he gets stressed and need to move them back to align perfectly.
[Andrei] No, it is not stress. I am just an emotional person!
[Kamila] But it is useful because I know we always have everything prepared. We have always everything organised before we go to work or competition or anywhere. But he gets angry when things don't go to plan
[Andrei] Of course I always have plan B. But I need to learn to prepare plan C.
[Kamila] No, you have to learn to have a plan B in the first place. He is better now, but in the beginning, it had to be exactly as he planned himself. But on the other hand it can give me a peace of mind.
[Andrei] I am a bit impulsive sometimes. But the way I am got me to where I am.
[Andrei] It's OK. She is a strong woman and I believe that every strong man has a strong woman by his side. I am a head and Kamila is a neck. If I am not taking about the details there is nothing I don't like about her. She is a positive person, she cooks for us, she practises hard... I cannot find anything which is a problem.
[Andrei] OK, I found something but it is not Kamila's fault. When we teach the couples she is very good teacher but sometimes she forgets I am not one of her students! She tries to teach me....
[Kamila] No, no. That's not like that!
[Andrei] This might be good as well because I still have a lot to learn
[Kamila] And we don't have a teacher with us every day so it is normal.
[Andrei] This is what sometimes annoys me.
[Kamila] When I want to change something he is often against it. But many times at the end he actually agrees with me.
[Andrei] I think I should be more patient. If I want something I want to have it now and right here. It is killing me sometimes. But I slowly started to learn to let go. I feel that sometimes I can be too egotistic. If something matters to me it becomes the most important to do or to get. I realise I am an impulsive person as well. It can be good on the dance floor. You have character and charisma. In the real life it is a problem but I try to find a solution or compromise.
[Kamila] I also try to be perfect but in the same time I realise it is not possible. Sometimes it is too much for me, it is frustrating. I am generally a positive person and confident but Andrei's energy can be too much for me. So I think I should also accept that I also can make mistakes.
[Andrei] I overwhelm her with my energy sometimes. It is just me.
[Kamila] I know I criticise you too much. Maybe I should listen to you sometimes. But only sometimes (laughing)
[Andrei] Men are like small kids and like to be praised. That's what we need from time to time.
[Andrei] Emotions
[Kamila] Yes, but keep them natural. Sometimes I see couples exaggerate.
[Andrei] Circus
[Kamila] I know it is weird to say stay natural while you have all the make-up and the dresses and tan. But while all that is artificial you need to find a balance between the show and being natural.
[Andrei] All this is part of dancing and we don't want to change it.
[Kamila] We agree to dress up and make up but want to be natural with our emotions
[Andrei] I don't see many couples who go onto the floor just to dance. Come on, just enjoy dancing don't pretend to be cool. I really think a lot of couples forget to be natural on the floor.
[Kamila] It is annoying to see some of them doing always the same moves, always the same face and mimic.
[Andrei] Maybe it will come with experience. But this is what I believe is most important: natural emotions. Of course, there is also sport element to dancing where we need to be physically fit. But at the end of the day this is only helping you to move your arms, to perform nice actions with your body. What you cannot learn is that natural feeling, it has to come from within and with years of dancing.
[Kamila] We should not be afraid to show what we really feel.
[Andrei] Of course you can learn how to show emotions: love, hate, sad but it is fake if it doesn't come from within. I am sure you can see the difference. You have to believe in what you are showing.
[Kamila] You should understand the moves and why you do them. You should ask yourself: why do I come to my partner, why do I touch his face. I think many dancers don't understand it, they just perform the steps they learned.
[Andrei] You should try to portray emotions through these steps. For example, I think it also comes with age. Take the Rumba: I believe that the Juniors and Juveniles should just do basic moves together and smile nicely. I hope they don't understand what they are trying to show! The real Rumba should be danced from the Youth age.
[Andrei] Well, without good basics you cannot dance.
[Kamila] You have to lean to move your body
[Andrei] When we teach couples we always set up a plan with them to make it clear what they should improve and what they should work on. This is for practice and training sessions. But during the competition forget about what you should and should not do, just enjoy it. We always say it to each other: just enjoy and sell your dancing as best as you can. Even when you make a mistake you can get away with it, nobody knows your choreography!
[Andrei] I always say one thing to them: remember, every dance move you do is now in the past and you cannot change it. So enjoy the moment.
[Kamila] Enjoy every moment of your dancing.
[Andrei] You can do the improvement later in the practice hall. During the competition we don't want to talk to them too much, the work has been already done in preparation so now they just need to enjoy.
[Kamila] Definitely we don't talk to them about technique. It is too late then anyway. No need to stress.
[Andrei] Fun
[Kamila] Freedom
[Andrei] Brazil
[Kamila] Energy
[Andrei] It has to be two words: my wife (laughing)
[Kamila] Life
[Kamila] Hmmm.... Also life
[Andrei] Paso? How to say it... inner peace
[Kamila] Are you sure? Is this what you feel in Paso?
[Andrei] Yes, of course. I think Paso should not be all about fight and crazy energy all the time. For me, you should hold it inside and not let it escape.
[Andrei] It is like: I don't care!
[Kamila] Fun, simply fun. I know it is trivial (laughing)
[Andrei] Before we danced in the English competitions we always started the competition with the Samba. This is how I was used to it. So for me it goes like a little story. You start with the Samba, you get to know each other and get a bit of fun together. With Cha Cha you go a bit deeper, you flirt, you touch here and there. Rumba comes next and is like a marriage, you have children, a house and money in the bank. Paso Doble comes next: it is a divorce. Or strong fight. Jive is the end when I am happy and free to start again (laughing).
[Kamila] Andrei, you are wrong that's not how it goes! It shows we made up, and are happy together.
[Andrei] This is typical Kamila! (laughing) Anyway, this is the little story involving all the five dances for me.
[Kamila] Short term: holiday. One week holiday to relax. We did not decide where we going to go but we need a short break.
[Andrei] We like to go away for holiday. I sit with a bottle of beer, Kamila has her ice-cream and we do absolutely nothing. That's what I like on my holiday.
[Kamila] Lots of sun and relax.
[Andrei] No, not now. I think when I am older I will enjoy more active holidays, I will do walking or visiting museums. The slightly longer term plans: have kids.
[Kamila] We are not talking about such a long term plans!
[Andrei] It is not too long term I hope. Don't you want children? (laughing)
[Kamila] Of course, but not yet.
[Andrei] OK, seriously, we want to improve our dancing in a sense we want to get a deeper understanding of the ways to express ourselves through dance. We need to work on our technique and musicality as well. We also want to teach all that to our couples. To give them ideas and something special from us.
[Kamila] We want them to understand that dancing is not just about the steps. Body movement is very important but they also should know why they do certain moves.
[Andrei] I want personality from them. We want to improve our club and quality of teaching. And I want my own children, not in a month time, maybe in a year or two. But not wait for the next ten years.
[Kamila] You will let me know when you want them (laughing)
[Kamila] Who knows, we will see. I am not planning anything yet.
[Andrei] At least two, maximum three.
[Kamila] We will see (laughing). OK, I am laughing now, but I am sure I don't want to be too old to start planning the family. I want to be a young Mum for my kids and not a Granny. Anyway, I am mentally getting ready for it.
[Andrei] I don't have to get mentally ready!
[Kamila] No, you don't (laughing)


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Friday, June 3, 2011
Feed issue
10 comments:
I was going to ask about that this morning. It's kind of amusing in some ways, but weird at the same time. Hope it gets sorted out soon.
- June 3, 2011 at 8:09 AM
- Patrick said...
I wondered why my RSS feed suddenly had a Grumpylanche(TM). It's attack of the pod bloggers!
- June 3, 2011 at 8:24 AM
- Patrick said...
Mrs Dr Grumpy: "So, tell me again how a 16 year old German girl got the keys to your blog?"
Dr Grumpy: " "
- June 3, 2011 at 8:26 AM
- RehabRN said...
I saw that on my Blogger reader.
BTW I believe they're Polish, at least from the looks of the words, anyway (took a Polish class many moons ago...)
- June 3, 2011 at 9:11 AM
- cbeck said...
There was a thread about this on the google help forums from a few other bloggers. Someone suggested it was from using custom templates that had a backdoor built in to them. One user was something like, "psychobabler" if you want to look it up... she reported switching to one of the default templates stoppped it.
Personally, I just figured it's another case of "google goofs". Just found your blog, btw - courtesy of Val@absurdoldbird. I like it much!
- June 3, 2011 at 9:26 AM
- Packer said...
Ah ha, covering for Congressman Weiner I see. Just wait until some co ed gets a picture of your............
- June 3, 2011 at 9:45 AM
- det-res said...
No issues at all. It was amusing..
- June 3, 2011 at 10:12 AM
- Kiryn said...
I've been having some odd issues with Google trying to redirect me to random websites whenever I click on search results. At first I thought it was Google changing their search so that you randomly get sent to advertisements instead of the link you clicked on, but it's more likely to be some sort of virus that I have so far been unsuccessful at hunting down.
I was convinced that this weird glitch was a result of that virus finally infecting my Google Reader too, and was scanning my hard drive with a variety of anti-malware trying to figure out where the problem was.
Good to know it's not just me.
- June 3, 2011 at 1:11 PM
- Caddy Wumpus said...
This is apparently going on in a couple of Blogspot places. The RSS feed for the Dinosaurs and Robots blog is showing some Italian facebook blog.
- June 3, 2011 at 1:13 PM
- JooJoo said...
Ok I'm glad I'm not the only one who had this problem! I thought it was just my computer wigging out.
- June 3, 2011 at 7:56 PM


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1999 Chryslers At Carlisle
The '99 Edition Was The Biggest In Carlisle Productions History
It took a while for the results to come in, but when we finally got them, they only made official what we thought all alongthe 99 Chryslers at Carlisle event was huge! We thought it felt bigger this year than in years past, and then the totals came in: with 1,110 show cars registered, it blew away last years total of 924 cars.
Not only did Mopar fans find it at Carlisle, they brought their Mopars, too. Carlisle has long been associated with car events as the ultimate in swap meets, but by cresting the 1,000-car mark, this has become a must-attend show. Proof was found in the abundance of cars entered in each of the Fun Field categories as well as the Standard of Modified Excellence judged category where the number of entrants more than doubled.
Another important measurement of growth: the family quotient. The atmosphere at Carlisle lends itself to participation by parents and their car-frenzied kids. This was most apparent in our effort to display our ongoing theme for Chryslers at Carlisle coverage. Carlisle Productions motto, I Found it at Carlisle, again is part of how we cover the event. As you read through the captions, youll notice that our hobby isnt just the guyskids and wives are getting in the act, too. Best of all, our attempt to show new Mopar fans was unintentional. Wed walk up to some guy carrying parts, and hed tell us it was his wifes or sons part for their own carhe was just the hired carry grunt! That, more than anything else, made the event great for us!
In less than a decade, Chryslers at Carlisle has proven to be a premier Mopar show. Weve always had a good time there and with the numbers climbing every year, the increased participation of clubs, and the amount of people just simply enjoying themselves, other Chrysler fans must think so as well.
To ensure that you get to attend upcoming Chryslers at Carlisle events, give the folks at Carlisle Productions a call. All of the contact information is included in the Source listing below.


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An ongoing line of action figures that spans the broad history of the DC Universe, as presented by artist George Pérez in the classic book HISTORY OF THE DC UNIVERSE!
Planned to include more characters than any DC Direct line ever, this series will feature characters from a variety of teams and eras, as well as some renegade solo characters.
The History of the DC Universe will undoubtedly increase the breadth of DC characters available as action figures, while satisfying many oft-requested fan favorite characters.


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To finish after three years and six months on the steam radio our Reverbnation Artist of the Week for this week and last week and a selection of my favourite artists.
Notable by their absence are Moff Skellington, Danny Short and Fall Fan Dave & The Lap Top Dancers who will in all likelyhood be the subject of a special podcast in the not too distant future.
Listen to the show here…..
- The Happy Fallen – Ultrawave – a new track from the ever productive Mr Neale James
- Easter – Damp Patch – a track from one of the albums of the year "Innocence Man"
- The Gin Circle – Sinderella Story – our reverbnation artist of the week , a trio from Leicester
- Factory Star – Incorruptible – one of the best bands around at the moment from the "New Sacral" release
- AAAK – Regenerate – another one of the best bands around at the moment – stunning at Salford Music Festival – from "Totalitarian Tip Toe" and featuring another particular favourite – Kin.
- Neuron No – Limonchik – from the "Little Lemon EP" – a band who never fail to amaze me with their musical abilities….
- Taser Puppets – Wasp – yet another one of the best bands around at the moment – great songs and a great attitude……
- We Could Be Astronauts – Loose Lips – were our Reverbnation Artist of the Week last week but I neglected to play them – and being a man of my word I am rectifying that omission.
- The Gin Circle – Lost To Be Found – as above
- Da Mutts – Albion Summer – an abiding love for this band and their song-crafting skills…..
- Kit B – Hulmenoid – Danny Cusick is one of our best song writers and here is another example of his abilities
- Positronik – Don't Come Crying – this should be in the charts not that tedious N-Dubz crap
- Toska Wilde and Luis Drayton – Glamoflage – so should this…..
- Kill Pretty – The Year of 13 Moons – best tune of the year for me, so I thought I would go out on a high
Thanks for listening – Aural Delights will be back in podcast form in about two weeks on – http://www.mixcloud.com/BobonSCR/……


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Audio: Duke & Kevin share stories
The true sign of spring with pitchers and catchers report starting this Monday and Officially Yours host Peter Calieri jumps in to baseball season with both feet on Hometown Radio, WECK 1230 with two members of the Bisons family.
Bisons broadcaster and Buffalo Baseball Hall of Fame member, Duke McGuire and Kevin Lester, Bisons official scorer and former pro scout, are pillars of the WNY baseball community and they never fail to entertain with their stories about happenings at and around the ballpark.
Take a trip down memory lane with stories about hitting fungos to John Goodman, hanging out Robert Redford in between scenes while filming "The Natural" at War Memorial Stadium and fending off Brian Giles at the pressbox door.
LISTEN: Duke & Kevin in-studio for the show
Picture: Duke McGuire, host Peter Calieri and Kevin Lester


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Iceland investigating mass herring deaths
Researchers in Iceland are blaming low oxygen levels in a shallow fjord for the deaths of tens of thousands of tons of herring.
Masses of dead herring have been found in Kolgrafafjordur fjord for the second time this winter, raising concerns about Iceland's fishery.
The Morgunbladid newspaper estimated the value of the 10,000 tons of fish found dead this week at 1.25 billion kronur ($9.8 million). An even larger number of fish died in December.
Roughly one season's worth of herring has been lost, Johann Sigurjonsson, director of Iceland's Marine Research Institute, said Wednesday.
He said herring tend to winter in large populations and may have depleted the oxygen in the shallow fjord. The danger should ease in spring when the herring spread out into a wider area, he said, downplaying fears that the entire herring fishery is in danger.
"We regard this as a serious event," he said. "We are investigating; we would like to find out if it is necessary to try to step in somehow."
The government's economic minister has increased funding for monitoring in the area to determine what can be done to prevent more fish from dying off. Some blame recent construction in the region for the kills.
Schoolchildren, town workers and volunteers have been cleaning up the dead fish, which can be turned into feed for mink and other animals.
Revenue from the sale is expected to go to local children and to area schools.
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